Windows to Mac keystroke mapping – a quick guide

In the nearly three months I’ve been blogging about switching to Mac I’ve had countless times that readers have made comments about my posts, recommending specific techniques, tricks or applications that have helped me improve my Mac experience. Yesterday it was n45800’s turn as he pointed me in the direction of a list of the default key bindings for OS X. This little gem was exactly what I needed to get past some of the keyboard issues I’ve been trying to adjust to.

As a touch typist I’ve really struggled at times to use the Mac keyboard; not necessarily the keyboard itself but the navigation shortcuts while editing text in a text editing surface. Here is a list of the most commonly used keystrokes on Windows XP for text editing and navigation and their Mac OS X equivalents:

Purpose

Windows

Mac OS X

Clipboard Commands

Copy

Ctrl+C

Command+C

Cut

Ctrl+X

Command+X

Paste

Ctrl+V

Command+V

Selection Commands

Select All

Ctrl+A

Command+A

Undo

Ctrl+Z

Command+Z

Redo

Ctrl+Y

Command+Y

Text Navigation Commands

Beginning of current line

Home

Command+Left Arrow

End of current line

End

Command+Right Arrow

Top of editing area

Ctrl+Home

Command+Up Arrow

End of editing area

Ctrl+End

Command+Down Arrow

Next word right

Ctrl+Right Arrow

Option+Right Arrow

Previous word left

Ctrl+Left Arrow

Option+Left Arrow

Beginning of next paragraph

Ctrl+Down Arrow

Option+Down Arrow

Beginning of previous paragraph

Ctrl+Up Arrow

Option+Up Arrow

This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means but if you are new to Macs and coming from Windows you should consider bookmarking this post or printing it out as a reference because it will save you lots of time. These key stroke combinations should work for most Cocoa based applications that include a text area to type in, including Safari, Mail, TextEdit, etc.

Notice that the Ctrl key is the only modifier used by Windows while OS X uses Command, Control and Option modifiers. Now I know why I’ve been struggling so much.

Want more keys?

Here are a couple of links to pages I’ve found that have more complete lists:

If you are making your way to Mac from Windows it’s a really good idea to immerse yourself into the keyboard shortcuts because they really will save you some time and improve your experience. Make an effort to use them and commit them to your "muscle memory"- it will really help you be more productive.